Attributions in the New Zealand Sports Pages.

The fomuulation of an attributional model of achievement motivation by Weiner et al. (1971) was the spur for recent research in the causal attribution area. Much of the early research based on this model relied on data from either hypothetical scenario or laboratory studies. Recent research in more natural settings has demonstrated that Weiner et al.'s two dimension/four attribution model was too restrictive. One of the more significant of these studies was Lau and Russell's (1980) examination of reasons reported for success and failure in newspaper accounts of American baseball and football games, The present study explored the reasons given for sporting outcomes in New Zealand newspapers. It replicates and extends the research of Lau and Russell (1980) by (a) classifying attributions along three dimensions (locus of causality, stability, and control) rather than the two used by Lau and Russell; (b) considering all sports for which explanations were forthcoming in the sports pages; and (c) adding cross-cultural validity. The sports pages of the two major Christchurch dailies for March 1985 were examined by 18 senior undergraduates. They identified 105 sports stories in which explanations for successful or unsuccessful performances appeared. The sports that were included ranged from World Series cricket to huskie racing and local junior athletics. A second group of 8 senior undergraduates classified these explanations according to causal dimension. Following Weiner (1979) and Lau and Russell (1980), the criteria used by the judges were as follows: 1. Locus of causality. An attribution was considered internal if it referred to something about the team or player whose performance was being explained. 2. Stability. An attribution was classified as stable if it would predict the same outcome in future games. 3. Controllability, An attribution was considered to be controllable if the factors influencing an outcome were under the control of some person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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